


The name of a world

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 07:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17679206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: Every planet with life starts with the same set of names.





	The name of a world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuKestrel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuKestrel/gifts).



“What’s this planet called, Professor?” Ace asked, as they strolled across a seemingly endless plain. Her eyes were peeled for the inevitable danger that would turn their nature walk into an adventure, but they’d been walking for hours and all she’d seen were far off herds of grazing animals which looked like a cross between woolly mammoths and warthogs.

“It depends who you ask. Most planets have many names: the ones given by the people who live and evolve there; the categorising placeholders bestowed on them by far off observers; the names of conquerors which usually have more to do with the places they’ve left behind than the new world they’re standing on.”

She’d expected this sort of answer. The banter was easy.

“What do the people who live here call this place?”

“What _will_ they call it,” the Doctor corrected, before stiffening and swinging his umbrella out at an angle. “That’s not good.”

Before Ace could ask his meaning, the temperature dropped. It had been chilly before – Ace had spent most of the walk with her hands deep in her jacket pockets – but suddenly the cold was cutting. Ace could feel her nose hairs stiffening as she inhaled. Her teeth chattered. The TARDIS was miles away.

The wind came out of nowhere. A sudden, rushing gale, pushing a nightmare front of swirling black clouds across the previously clear horizon. The sky roiled. Snow and small chunks of ice started pelting them. The precipitation seemed to come from every direction at once, even the ground seemed to be spitting hail at them. The Doctor was shouting something, but Ace couldn’t hear him over the din.

She felt him draping his coat over her shoulders, and grabbing her hand before her fingers went completely numb. She was blind in the storm, being dragged forward into a vortex where everything was a chaotic, screaming white.

*

The furs smelled sharp and musky, as if they were still a part of some living animal and not a tangled, shaggy heap of russets and browns, skinned and stacked by the fire. They were warm though, so Ace was grateful to sink into them, wrapping a particularly pungent specimen around her shoulders. The weight of it was comforting. It took her several long minutes to realize what it meant that she was warm, and conscious, and alive.

She was in a rounded earthen hut. Furs were stacked high around the edges with a fire pit in the center. Some of the smoke escaped through a small ceiling vent, but a good portion of it hung around, thickening the air, and adding a woody overtone to the tang of the furs.

The Doctor sat on the other side of the fire, steam gently rising off his shirt sleeves. He was balancing metal pot on a stick so it would hang over the fire. The flickering light cast strange shadows on his face. He looked mysterious and intent, but Ace knew that he always looked like that, fire-light or no fire-light. Other than the crackle of the fire and the gradual boil of the water in the pot, it was strangely quiet. If the storm still raged outside, she couldn’t hear it.

“Is that tea?” Ace asked.

“Only melted snow,” the Doctor said.

“Wicked.”

They drank out of tiny metal cups. Ace didn’t ask where they’d come from, or the pot.

“Where are we?” she asked instead, after her third cup of hot water.

“A hunting shelter, probably.” The Doctor took a long sip of hot water. “Every planet with life starts with the same set of names, the only differences are language.”

“Mmm?” Ace asked, with her belly full of hot water, she was starting to feel sleepy. Which was odd, since hadn’t she just been asleep? The Doctor stood up, shuffling around the fire to tuck Ace under more layers of fur.

“They’re all called earth, the parent-land, home.”

“Every planet is home,” Ace mumbled as she drifted off. And even though she was stranded in a smelly hut, on a planet she didn’t properly known the name of, in a universe where she’d never really felt like she properly belonged in any one place, and she was probably suffering from some kind of post-hypothermia delirium, it still felt like one of the truest thoughts she’d ever said.

The Doctor was beside her, they’d get back to the TARDIS eventually, and it didn’t matter how far they travelled or how much danger they fell into along the way. As long as they were together, every planet was home.


End file.
